Transcription
Today is a big day because we're going to share some insight and some goals that God has given us for this year for our church. But also because our church is in a very healthy place right now. I mean, we're growing like crazy. Um, not just numerically, which we are growing numerically, but also spiritually, which is the most important thing. I see you guys, the Christ is being fully formed in you. Many of you all are saying no to some things so that you can say yes to some better things. I see us worshiping God and bringing people to church with us. I just want you to know that, uh, job well done. Amen.
And so today is a great day. For those of you all who are first-time guests, you picked a great day to come. I don't know how you picked today to come, but I don't believe you're here by an accident. The Bible says a righteous person's footsteps are ordered by the Lord. And so, one Sunday a year, the first Sunday of February, we have Vision Sunday, where we kind of give you prophetic insight, goals, and strategies. And so, if you're a first-time guest, I guess God has you here so that you can kind of get the behind-the-scenes look at our church and really get the heartbeat. And maybe you'll just go home and say, you know what? God, is this the place that you want me to be? I believe that you're here for divine purposes. And so, welcome.
Well, the first thing I would love to do is to give out our annual report as a gift to you, okay? And so, if ushers in Gainesville, Orlando, if you can kind of just start passing those around very quickly. And so, there's going to be an usher. They're going to come with an annual report, and we want to put this in your hands.
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Thank you.
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All right, all right. Okay. Now, we're big on building memorials here, okay? A memorial is something that you set up to remember what God has done. Many times, when it comes to our faith, we're always on to the next battle, what we're believing God for next. But every once in a while, we need to build a memorial and say, God, thank you for what you've done. Thank you for how far you've brought me. All right.
And so, we're going to go through some numbers here. And as we go through this magazine very quickly, I want you to remember this statement: Every number has a name, every name has a story, and every story is important to God. And we're going to highlight a few of them because we know you can look at the rest when you go home. All right.
On the front page here, of course, the front cover, we have our mission statement, which is what? To love God, love people, and love life. If you open it up to page number two, there's a QR code that has some campus-specific information that will help lead you to a place where you can sign up for the growth track or to get on the Dream Team. Page number three is our table of contents. Page number four is a letter from your favorite people in the world. Page number five are some statistics that I would like to stop right here and hone in on. Are you ready? Say, I'm ready.
All right. Page number five. This year, 2022, we were able to lead 6,296 people to Jesus, 1,827 first-time guests, and 228 water baptisms. Come on, somebody, give God praise for that. Okay.
The next page is page number six, and it has our culture code. We want you to begin to put these in your heart and literally live these out day by day, week by week. Page number seven has some great statistics about our next generation. We made a huge investment into our our children and to our youth, um, at both campuses. Every Wednesday night, we have a live youth. If you bring your kids to the table, we will help them eat and help them fall in love with Jesus. We also have an encounter conference that we call a live camp, a live youth camp that happens every summer. This year, it's going to be July the 10th through the 14th, and our hope is that if you can get your kids there, we're going to send them back to you better. Somebody say, Amen.
Page number 10 goes into ALI. It's what we call our Alive Leadership Institute. Now, let me ask you guys a question. How many of you all feel a call of God on your life at all? Let me see about your hands. Okay, that's a lot of people. Now, I know some of y'all, you're scared and you didn't lift your hand, but you sent something there. If that's you, one of the things that you do with the call is that it's not going to fall in your lap. You have to take a step towards it. And if you take a step towards it, God's going to clarify it more and more. All right. If that's you, ALI would be a great next step for you. Okay.
For those of you all who are here and you want to know the culture of our church more, maybe you are a leader in another church, but now you're here in this season, you cannot lead in this new place with old wine skin, so to say. God wants to do a new thing, so there has to be an investment, no matter how long you've been in ministry, to get the culture of this house. Or maybe you don't know all of that about ministry, but you just want to be a better leader, whether it's in the business world, whether it's in your community, ALI might be a great next step for you.
We've broken the Alive Leadership Institute, which is our training program, our mentorship program for leaders, into two different segments. We have a day program that's specifically geared for students between the ages of 18 and 25 years old that are wanting their bachelor's degree. All right. If that's you, now, as a young person, you don't have to go to college across the nation and spend all this money. You can stay right here at home for a fraction of the cost. We have partnered with Southeastern University, an accredited university here in Lakeland. They do the academia part, but we do the leadership, mentorship, discipleship part. Together, we are a match made in heaven. If that bears witness with you, applications are open now. There will be an ALI booth out in the foyer after service today. Just stop by, get your questions answered. You can actually put it on the FAFSA form and get financial aid here.
For those of you all who already have your degree, or you're not in search of a degree, but simply you want the culture of this house and you want to be a better leader in whatever area you lead in, the evening program might be a good fit for you. Our Alive Leadership Institute evening program meets once a week, and most of it's online for the first year. It's a two-year program, but the second year, we only meet once a month. There's all kinds of different activities that we have, but if you give us two years, we can help you develop the heart and the hands to be able to lead in ministry, the kind of heart that you need and the skillfulness of your hands to be who God's called you to be.
But if you go to page 10, we're going to celebrate some numbers. Um, this year, we had 40 students enrolled in the ALI, and then we had 23 students graduate. And remember, that every number has a name, every name has a story, and every story is important to God. All right.
If you go over to page number 12, I want to look at our financial statistics. All right. And this was a breakout year for us as it relates to your giving, as it relates to generosity. I've always said that we can do more if we have more, and, uh, this is that year. And I want to just park right here for a moment and just say thank you for those of you, you all who have given. This was a year that you put your faith out there. This was a year that you decided to obey God more than you obeyed man. This was a year that you lived with an open heart and an open hand. And that's why we've seen thousands of people come to Jesus. Are y'all here with me today? All right.
And so, I want to say thank you for those of you all who took the 90-day tithe and challenge. I want to say thank you to those of you all who have signed up for automatic giving online, like the first thing you do before you go to Starbucks and before you pay for your Disney season pass, is the first thing you do is you give to God. I want to say thank you. Whether you've given a dollar to this church or a million dollars, I want you to know it's all had an eternal impact. There's going to be people in heaven that just say, thank you for what you sacrificed. Thank you for what you gave. As a pastor, I always say, it's my job to set the vision, but it's the generosity of the church that will determine its pace. This year, you guys picked up the pace. Come on, put your hands together for what this year, you picked up the pace.
Now, I am a big faith guy, y'all know that. I don't believe anything's too hard for the Lord. I believe all things are possible to them that believe. That's just the nature of who I am. And for some reason, in my spirit, I feel like this year, I'm, I'm to believe God for that number to double. Yeah, I got three people that got a revelation. I don't know, call me crazy, but I just believe the number that you see on page number 12, by the end of next year, we're going to believe God for that number to double. Why? So that we can double the people that we're reaching, double the missions that we can do, double the impact that we can make. You say, Pastor, how would that happen? I don't know, but I'm going to start by praying that God doubles your income for those of you all who are givers. If that's you, you might want to get a hand up. I'm going to pray that this is a year that God, for my givers, now, that God doubles your income because the case is closed. That number will double if every person, if your income is double. But I don't know how God's gonna do it, but I got faith for it. Or God's gonna send thousands of people to this church that loves the tithe and loves to give to God. Or God's gonna inspire one or two people that's really blessed, just the right big checks. I don't know how you're gonna do it. I just believe that's time for the double. Somebody say, the double. And we're going to reach double people this year. Amen.
If you go over to page number 13, because you gave, because you gave, because you gave, this is what we've been able to do. Page 13, the yellow one. Because you gave, this year we were able to invest $412,000 into missions. 10% of all you give to this church, we allocate it right back to missions. We were able to have some of the best Serve Saturdays ever. We sent out 800 volunteers and we served our community with 2,113 hours. The Sunday before Christmas, we do a thing called Big Give Sunday. We just pay it forward from your giving during Super Sunday. This year, we were able to give back $100,000 during Big Give Sunday. Not only that, we were able to pay off medical debt of people in Alachua County and Orange County to the tune of $1,731,220. These people, over 2,000 people, received a letter in the mail saying, look, Jesus, along with ALIVE Church, has paid off your debt. You are free to go. And we actually had a lady show up today, didn't even know she was coming, to say, listen, I'm here because you guys paid off my medical debt. All right. So thank you for your generosity.
All right. We did 69 outreach projects this year, utilizing 425 volunteers. And I love this one. We gave out 2,600 care packages to the homeless and the poor that is on the streets in our city. Come on, somebody, give God praying. Let's give God praise in the house. But this is, we're going over this, but I need you to hear this, that every number has a name, and every name has a story, and every story is important to God.
There's a few numbers that did not make the annual report this year, but I think it's important that you need to know of, and it's the impact that we've been able to make online and through our social media. We understand that our current society is becoming more and more antichrist, more and more secular. So you and I have to wax bold, and we have to become more and more kingdom, more and more God first. That there is an anointing on our life to win this generation that need Jesus, even though they reject him. One of the greatest tools in our generation that God has given us, even though I can't stand it sometimes, is social media and the internet. So we put all of our different mediums together because we wanted you to see that we're not just having social media to be queued, okay? We're not having it to reach church people. I know I don't believe, I don't know if that's appropriate. We ain't for you. We ain't fishing for you. We online fishing for people that ain't here yet. And I'm happy to report, if you put all of our social medias together this year, we reached 112,897,000. Ain't nobody mad but the devil himself. And 95 people.
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Come on, Gainesville, you excited about that? Okay. We're going to make an investment this year online into our online campus, into our platforms. You know, just one month ago, we launched a new podcast and a YouTube channel called Doing Life with Ken and Tabitha. It's a podcast where we talk and we get real and we get raw, and we talk all things marriage, we talk all things finances and money and intimacy and the kingdom of God. It is a really, really good podcast. There's an anointing on it. And over the first 30 days of this podcast, we've had 1,136 subscribers in 30 days and 17,200 views in 30 days. But every name, every number has a name, every name has a story, and every story is important to God.
How many of you all have been able to tune into a podcast so far? Anybody here? Okay. How many of you all have enjoyed the content? Okay. We don't have this platform to get famous because I don't want to be famous. I don't like it. I don't like going to the mall and people tracking me down. I really like my prophecy, but I want to make His name famous. So I'm willing to put my personality on the altar to make His name famous around the world. Here's the deal. All right. So we will be releasing a new show every Tuesday and Thursday. And if you really enjoy the content, one way that you can help is by liking the content, sharing the content, commenting on the content, even writing a review, if it's a good one, on the content. Praise God. You say, what does that do? It speaks to Mr. Algorithm, whoever that is, that people love this content, so they put it out more. It's one way that we reach 2 million people over the next 20 years with the church. Say, Amen. Come on, Gainesville. I said, say Amen.
Now, let's talk about vision. Everybody say, vision. Page number 15 in your magazine. We've broken vision down into three different categories this year: spiritual vision, numerical vision, and prophetic vision. All right. Now, do this for me, Gainesville, Orlando. Put your magazines down for a moment, because sometimes we're going through something that we're looking at naturally, but I need you to hear from the spirit of God today. When I start talking about vision, your thoughts should be, God, what part do I play in it? Your thoughts shouldn't be, oh, look at what the church is doing. Though, because we are the church. Your thoughts should be, okay, God, what part do I play? I believe there's going to be some babies that come alive now. Some of y'all don't want to be pregnant again. I'm not talking about like a natural baby. I'm talking about God's gonna birth something spiritual deep down in the room of your spirit. Something gonna come alive on today so that you can know that you are called and this is the exact place that you're supposed to be. Everybody say, vision.
Here's some vision for spiritual vision. We see our partners having daily time with God. And I want to ask you to start making your daily time with God extremely important, okay? Daily time with God, time in His presence, time in prayer. One of the best discipleship tools that we can teach you is not just to get in the group, even though it's important. What do you do when you come out of that group? Do you spend time with God? And not just time in worship and singing, I'm talking about time in the word. I think it's time for us to get back to Bible studies, meditating on the word of God, remembering the word of God, speaking the word of God, researching the word of God. It is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We need the daily bread of the word of God. Years ago, in my 20s, when I first got filled with the Holy Spirit, somebody told me to spend an hour in Bible study every day. And I ain't know nothing, so that's exactly what I started to do. It was so boring in the beginning, but man, it went from boring to a blessing because all of a sudden, God began to speak to me from it, and I began to renew my mind and break off the old patterns and establish the mind of Christ. And maybe you don't have an hour, maybe you don't have 30 minutes, but we all at least got 15 minutes. This is a year for us to have daily time with God. Would somebody say, Amen?
Spiritual vision, number two. This is a year we want to see spiritual and emotional maturity from the people of our church. Nobody's saying nothing in this service. Spiritual maturity is not you just remembering the Bible and quoting scriptures. Heathens can do that. Atheists can do that. Spiritual maturity is when you know the Bible and you live it out. Spiritual maturity is when you know the Bible and you live it out. When temptation is all around, when it's not popular, when it's not politically correct, when you're in a storm, when you're in a valley, when you're going through something in your life, I'm still going to do what God said. I've grown the most spiritually through our cancer battle, through persecution, through being misunderstood. This is a year for us to grow spiritually. But it's also a year for us to grow emotionally. How many of you all, if you are honest, you need to grow emotionally, like mentally and emotionally? All right. This is a year for us to get counseling. You know, some of us, we know that we need counseling, but for whatever reason, we just haven't went and done it yet. Come on. You know your marriage is hanging on by a thread, but you haven't went in for counseling. This is a year for us to make that investment. See, sometimes we think it's just the supernatural, like we're just going to pray and God's going to fix our marriage. But faith without works is dead, being alone. You got to do your part, and God's going to do His part. And we need counsel willing to overcome sex addictions, counseling to overcome pornography addictions, counseling to figure out how to raise our kids in this crazy generation. We need some help. All right.
So, I'm happy to announce here in Orlando, we've actually brought on a full-time therapist. Her name is Holly Rosario. She's going to be working out of the church. She has her master's in Clinical Psychology or something like that, that's fancy, and 17 years in practice. And if you need a counselor, she's a good person to start. She'll be out in the hallway right after service today, and you can find out her pricing and her information. But we also, every, our campus pastors are going to have a list of counselors that we vetted in our cities that we can also refer to you. Maybe you can't come to church, maybe it's just not a good fit for you, whatever it is, we just want to be the source of a source to help you get the help that you need. All right.
And number three, one of our spiritual goals is to see everybody in our church walking in the joy of the Lord. If you drip in joy, can you make some noise? If you're drifting? All right.
Our numerical vision, and this is going to be more like goals for this year, all right. I want you to hear God in this, all right. We want to see 40 new students a part of the Alive Leadership Institute evening program. Now, it's first come, first serve. We kind of want to cap it right around there so we can give you quality over quantity. But if that's you, you want to sign up as soon as you can. And we're also believing God for five new students that will be a part of the day program, actually get their degree from here. Number two, we have a goal this year to invest $500,000 back into missions. That's a half a million dollars. So help us, God, we gonna do it. And number three, our third goal, and I want to park on this one just for a moment. If you're here, say, I'm here. We're believing God for 5,000 first-time guests to visit our church this year. 5,000. Come on. Five. 5,000. Come on, Gainesville. Everybody say, 5,000. 5,000. 5,000. Last year, we had 1,800. So we're gonna see the impossible this year. We're gonna more than double it this year. All right. And this is going to involve everybody. Please tell your neighbor, he's talking about you. Please. He's talking about this is going to involve all of us. This is going to involve our extroverts and our introverts. It doesn't matter your personality. This is what I need you to know is that God is putting people in your life that you work with, live beside, and that you meet. And all you have to do is invite them to church with you. Bring them to church with you. Studies show us that 80% of unchurched people would come to visit your church if you just asked. But many Christians come and say, well, this is a church just for me, and I'm getting blessed. No, this is not just for you. The gathering is for the scattering so that we can go out and win our cities to Jesus. And there are people that I know you're nervous, but I don't know what they believe, and what it's going to be like. They never been to church before. When they put their foot on holy ground, and they experience a love that they've never experienced out in the world, and they experience the authentic presence of God, and the Holy Spirit begins to move, and people are healed in their seats. What you have as an invitation is a lifeline to save somebody's eternal destiny. And so this year, how many of y'all can help with that 5,000 people, first-time guest? And I believe that if we can, we can win them. God can clean them. Amen. Amen.
All right, let's talk about prophetic vision. It's called them to be. Do I got any real men? Any mighty men of valor in the house? Thank you. So right now, the devil has given our society its best shot. I see it all over the media, we see it all over the place that he is doing everything he can for us to devalue who men are. Whether it's the feminization of men, or whether it's us taking the fathers out of the home, or acting like we don't even need a man. Right. Here's the deal. Biblically, God has created man and woman equal in His eyes. We've both been made in the image and likeness of God, but we have individual and unique assignments that is very needed for society to be on balance. This is a year that we want to raise up fathers to be who they're supposed to be. Papa Was a Rolling Stone, but the curse stops now, and it stops with you. Come on, somebody. We're going to raise up husbands to be faithful to their wives. Come on, somebody. We're going to raise up men to be the businessman and the provider. We're going to raise up men to serve in the house and to sing on the worship team and to be tough, but also tender at the same time. This is our year. And so starting on next Sunday, when we launch our groups, we're actually starting men's groups at both campuses. We're not gonna have a peyote. We don't need all that. We just need men right now to get involved. Get involved. You say, men don't need to be alone. You need to stop hanging out with your drinking pool hall buddy buddies. You need to get around some other mighty men of valor that have integrity and character and can help you be.
Number two, prophetic vision. We want to expand our campuses, okay? And there's a lot of things that are working with that. Um, but the number one focus right now is building a new building for our Gainesville Campus. Yes. This is a project that we've been working on for many years. And I want to say thank you, Gainesville, um, for being patient. But this is what we sense in our spirit for your city, that there is revival winds that is blowing your direction, and that God is about to explode Gainesville in the name of Jesus. And He's going to use you guys to not just touch a city, but to change that part of Florida. So help us, God. And we need a facility to be able to facilitate more ministry. Okay. And so, um, we're in a two-year thing called Open Heaven, and it will conclude on March the 13th. Will be the two-year period. If you could wait until then, I'm excited to unfold some new developments. The board of directors, we've been working behind the scenes, using tons of prudence and wisdom to make the right decisions for Gainesville to take another step. Hopefully, um, March 13th at Stretch Point Sunday, I will be able to share with our entire church what we've been able to do over these two years and what God is saying is next. And so we look forward to that.
But this is the last one, but I want you to, um, to kind of park on this one as well for prophetic vision. Um, and it's mobilizing the troops. As I was seeking God for this year, I was like, God, can you give me vision for our church for this year? I heard the Lord say, well, just keep doing what you're doing. You know, as a pastor, sometimes there's a temptation to come up with something new to kind of make you excited. But I feel like God is saying, you're already doing everything that you need to do. Keep having small groups, keep leading people to growth track, keep having Serve Saturdays, keep doing missions around the world. We're coming on TBN Russia to reach almost 215 million households in Russia, in a war-torn country. Just keep doing that, son. But I said, God, I need something. Can you give me something that I can kind of share with the people to get us excited and galvanize us? He says, this, mobilize the troops. And you say, what does it mean to mobilize the troops? It means to get us all in a position to get ready to attack. You know, many times we're out of position for possession, and we want to know why we don't have victory. Many of us are out of position in our relationships, we're out of position in our heart set, we're out of position in our mind. We're just not where we need to be at the day and the time we need to be. And God is saying this year, it's time to position ourselves for possession. I need us to mobilize the troops. Okay. We understand that this won't happen overnight, but if we can get everybody in our church today just to take a step towards the purposes of God, what would our church imagine with me for a moment? What would it look like if everybody here in all of our campuses just take a step towards the call of God? Just one step towards the purpose of God. You say, Pastor, what is that? That's mobilizing the troops.
And so today, our campus pastors are going to come in just a moment. They're going to share with you vision and preach a great message. And, um, they're going to release a new campaign for our church, and it's called 260. 260. Here's the goal: to see 200 new people join our Dream Team over the next 60 days. All right, that's the goal. That's how we mobilize the troops. 200 new people. So if you're not currently on the Dream Team, I want you to keep your heart open of what God's going to direct and what He's going to speak today. 200 people over the next 60 days. And if we're able to accomplish that goal, we will be positioned for the new building that's coming towards Gainesville in Jesus name. We will be positioned for Orlando. Get ready. We're about to go to three services in Orlando. I don't know if you can tell, we were completely out of seats at both services. Okay. So our goal right now is to go to three services the Sunday after Easter, which is mid-April. But we cannot do that with a skeleton crew. We can only do that when we mobilize the troops and position ourselves to take advantage and advance the kingdom of God.
Hey, thank you so much for tuning in to ALIVE Online today. I pray that message was a blessing to you. I pray that the Holy Spirit just take something from it and He illuminates it to where your life will never be the same again. If that's the case, make sure you let us know how your life was impacted and changed because of the message on today. We would love for you to share this content. You know, we have a saying in ALIVE Church that one invite can change a life. We also believe that one share can change a life. I mean, get your share on. God will use your share as a lifeline to reach people around the world. All right.
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